


isn't it lovely (all alone)

by CassandraStarflower



Series: lovely [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (a canonical attempt), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Suicidal Thoughts, Tim Drake-centric, fuck you dc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28834608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassandraStarflower/pseuds/CassandraStarflower
Summary: Tim Drake, loss, and loneliness.A character study on my favorite Robin.
Relationships: Batfamily Members & Tim Drake, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Series: lovely [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123244
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	isn't it lovely (all alone)

**Author's Note:**

> During the 2019-2020 school year, from about October to March, I spent my time at school, excepting a few breaks, without a roommate (due to a somewhat complicated series of events involving my roommate ditching in October without any sort of communication whatsoever, no I’m not still upset about that at all :) not in the slightest). This became shockingly lonely, particularly once classes became online- there was a while where I went days with my only conversations being with the cashiers at the dining halls. Parts of this are based off of that experience.   
> Title comes from “lovely” by Billie Eilish and Khalid. Appropriate, given the song’s about depression and the fic is… depressing.   
> (Okay, it’s not all depressing, it has a happy ending!)

You hate being alone. 

It’s not even something you know about yourself until you aren’t. Until you don’t spend every day alone in a big empty house. Until you have people around you, talking to you and each other. 

You never know you always hated being alone until you aren’t anymore. 

And now you can’t just go back to how you lived every day for years. 

It’s an odd feeling, being alone but not. Spending every day going to the same place, occasionally talking to people, and then going back to the empty house with no one there to talk to, no one to turn to and chat with, or even just  _ exist _ with. 

You think it’s called loneliness. Bruce calls it  _ neglect, _ when you tell him how your parents leave for months on end. He seems angry. You don’t understand, and you say as much, and that makes him angrier. But he asks you to stay with him anyway. 

You like knowing there are people waiting for you, at the end of the school day, even if it’s strange sometimes. 

When your mother dies and your father ends up in a coma, it’s almost like nothing changes. It isn’t like you  _ knew _ them, anyway. Right? 

(It does hurt. That they stayed away so much, that you never knew them, never got to know them, never got to be around them except in tiny moments between trip after trip.)

You’re so used to being alone. So used to the numbness that comes with it. But when you have to go back, after your father wakes up, it’s worse. A suffocating blanket of nothing. Time passing in odd ways, slipping by too quickly to grasp and at the same time dragging on for eternity. 

Your dad may be alive, but he’s gone so much now. Again. Even though he promised. 

But you’ve always known that adults never keep their promises. 

(Bruce has. So far. You still have Robin. But adults never keep their promises. You know this, hold this in your heart so you can’t be disappointed when they leave again. Let you down again. Again, again, again.)

When your dad dies, you can’t breathe. Everything is going wrong. It’s not even just your dad dying, after  _ finally _ telling you he loves you. It’s your mom. It’s Steph. It’s Jason coming back and  _ hating _ you, your hero loathing your very existence. That hurts. And it’s just the start. 

Kon. Bart.  _ Bruce. _

And finally, Robin. 

You’re alone again, but it’s okay, because that’s what you’re used to. You let yourself trust Dick, but that was wrong, clearly, and you should have remembered.  _ Adults never keep their promises. _

You leave. 

It’s okay. It  _ is. _ You’re used to it. You’re okay with this. Even if no one believes you when you  _ insist  _ that Bruce is still alive- 

(Maybe they’re right. Maybe you’re just hanging on too hard to another thing you’ve lost. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that Bruce,  _ Batman _ would keep his promises, right? So he can’t have left you, not after he promised not to.) 

You keep going, pushing yourself past your limits, and you lose more and more and more. 

Z and Owens weren’t your  _ friends,  _ exactly, but you… 

You’re so  _ sick _ of losing things. 

Your spleen is barely an afterthought, really. Just one more in the endless list. What’s left? 

(Your life. You wouldn’t care much if you lost  _ that  _ either.)

You keep going. 

You’ve long ago passed your limits. You can’t keep this up. But you have to. 

_ You’re alone again. _

It’s cold, chains biting into your wrists  _ her  _ standing over you and the catacombs swirl around you and you think that after this, you might need to- 

(Empty. Numb. You might as well die.)

Cass comes. Cass saves the day and you know she’s your favorite. Forever. 

She understands in a way no one else seems to. Her childhood was silence and shadows and pain, and yours was silence and nothingness and numbness. 

You go home, but not home. 

_ You’re alone again. _

Even though Bruce is alive, and you were right all along. 

Damian is still Robin. 

Kon and Bart and Steph are alive, Bruce is alive, everything you’ve lost- 

But you’re alone again, and you tell yourself it’s okay. You’re used to it. You live in a nice little apartment in the city, and you run Bruce’s company for him, and you’re okay. 

You have to be. 

Even if it stings, looking at Damian in your costume. It’s not yours, not anymore, and it was  _ Dick’s _ first, so you can’t be hurt by that. You can’t. 

It was Dick’s, and then he gave it up and it was Jason’s. And then Jason died and you took it. And then it was yours until your father found out, and it became Steph’s. And then Steph died and you took it again, covered in blood because that’s just how it works for you. 

_ You are built from loss and grief and loneliness, and you pieced yourself together from the shattered parts of a child who believed in the promises of adults, a stupid child who thought everything would be okay until it wasn’t. You are the tattered remnants of the child who watched the Flying Graysons fall, who waited by the window for a car, who watched Jack and Janet Drake walk away over and over and over again. _

You are not Robin anymore. And it hurts. Being Robin was… 

They  _ listened. _

Not that they don’t, exactly… just. 

The wider community still thinks you lost your mind. Lost one person too many and went over the edge. So what if you were right about Bruce? It’s a coincidence. 

They don’t really trust what you have to say. Not anymore. 

(Maybe they’re right. Maybe you did lose your mind. Maybe… maybe.)

Bruce still listens. But he doesn’t know, not about you leaving, not about Ra’s, not about… No one’s told him, not yet. And you can’t bring yourself to. You can’t lose this one last thing. Can’t. 

So you grit your teeth and ignore Damian’s snide comments and Jason’s scowls and Dick’s stares and  _ everything. _

You can handle this. It’s better than being so  _ alone. _ As alone as you were before, when your parents were never home and you wandered the halls of Drake Manor, small and silent, treading the carpets like a ghost. 

At least there are people. At least if you stopped responding to texts or showing up on patrol they’d notice, right? 

Not like your parents. You don’t think they’d have realized if you were  _ dead,  _ as long as the teachers didn’t call them for you missing class. 

Or Mrs. Mac finding your corpse. Not that you’d probably have died in the house, anyway. 

(No matter how hard you try, no one stays. You  _ hate _ being alone. But no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, it’s not enough. No one stays.) 

You watched a show once, because Cassie called you and said it was good and funny. She didn’t tell you it was so  _ real.  _ Too real. Some things just hit too close to home. 

Like when one character says to another, “Solitude can do funny things to the mind” and the other says “It’s the being alone that breaks you”. 

You have to pause during that conversation. You watch the rest of the show, and you don’t let yourself think about those lines. 

_ It’s the being alone that breaks you. _

You don’t let yourself think about some things. You don’t ever wonder if they (your family? your friends?) love you, if anyone at all loves you. 

You  _ can’t. _ Because if they don’t, it might break you. 

You’ve always been stupid about that. Love. 

It doesn’t matter if they love you, right? As long as they need you. Like your mother used to say, sometimes, when your father wasn’t around (gone to work, or to his friends, or  _ somewhere _ she didn’t like) and you were so small you fit on her lap perfectly. 

(Sometimes, you dream about those hazy hours sitting on her lap, listening to her work, watching her write and type and scold employees over the phone. Sometimes, she talked to you, dispensing bits of advice between emails and phone calls. She spoke about love once. Said it wasn’t important, that people  _ needed _ you but didn’t need to love you. You didn’t say what you were thinking, not then, not ever. Not to her.) 

Your mother would be disappointed to see you now. Wishing. 

You can be so  _ stupid _ about these things. 

They have to love you. You can’t let yourself believe otherwise. Even if they love you as a stand-in for Jason, a less-crazy alternative, even if they love you as a detective or a helper or a leader or something you’re not. 

At least they love you. 

You hate living alone. When Bruce asks you, gently (so gently, like he’s afraid he’ll scare you off, like your ragged edges show), to move back into the Manor, you don’t resist. Even if it means Damian can find you easier. 

You just don’t have the energy to deal with him. So you ignore him. 

(It’s funny to watch his look of apoplectic rage when you pretend you can’t hear him, but you’re careful to only do it when not in costume. Probably better to avoid setting him off on patrol.) 

You like having people around, even if it means that you have to retreat to some distant, dusty corner of the Manor to be a little bit alone. 

It’s hard to go from echoing silence and the muffled static of  _ alone _ to the sudden crush of the entire four other people living in this very large house. 

(Okay, so you might have some problems. Perhaps. Maybe. Just a few. Who doesn’t feel the crushing weight of their failures constantly?) 

Bruce ruffles your hair when he passes you in the mornings, and Alfred makes you breakfast and tsks at the dark circles under your eyes, and Duke sits next to you in companionable silence, and Damian hisses at you like an actual cat and glares every time you come near. 

You feel less numb now. 

Cass comes home from Hong Kong, and sits down at the dinner table like she’s been there all along even though no one knew she was even back in the country. 

She looks at you and  _ sees _ you. 

The numbness is slow to retreat, but you’re not alone now. The house is full enough to feel not-quite- _ crowded _ but not empty at all. 

Jason stops glaring at you. It’s not enough to mend the torn places in your heart from everything he’s done to you, but it feels like something. Something new. 

Dick ruffles your hair again and calls you  _ little brother _ and freezes when you start crying. 

You don’t mean to. You never mean to. 

The conversation you have that day mends another tattered part of your heart. Dick listens to you and you listen to him and you both  _ try. _

You have always thought of them as family. From the moment Bruce signed the papers that declared it, you’ve clung to that. 

But now, finally, you know they see you as family too. 

You’re not alone anymore. You’re afraid to enjoy it, afraid to let yourself get more attached, afraid to be used to it. Afraid that it will all be snatched away again. 

Just because they promised to be your family, to be there, doesn’t mean anything. 

_ Adults never keep their promises. _

But that doesn’t mean they  _ always _ leave promises broken. 

You are beginning to learn that your childhood left as many marks on you as Jason’s and Damian’s did on them. That it was damaging in an entirely different way, perhaps not filled with violence but with a  _ nothingness _ that harmed the ways you see the world. 

Children aren’t supposed to learn that adults don’t keep promises. 

You think maybe most of the things you learned as a child are wrong. 

It’s a scary thought, that your mother and father were wrong. That love is important and that children need their parents to love them and be there with them. 

You’re not the only one who is still unlearning things. 

Damian isn’t making comments at you anymore, and he seems to be, not  _ calm  _ exactly, but less… mean. 

Dick works wonders on vaguely feral children, apparently. Possibly this is also Alfred’s influence. 

Jason comes over more. Doesn’t snap at Bruce as much. Doesn’t seem so  _ angry, _ like Damian. 

You know your presence probably doesn’t help either of them, but… 

You don’t want to leave (to be alone again). And no one asks you to. 

That’s nice. You’ve never really been anyone’s number one priority, you don’t think, except maybe while you were Robin, when it was just you and Bruce. 

But you were kind of the only one Bruce had to worry about on patrol. 

So maybe it doesn’t count. 

But you’re not anybody’s  _ last _ priority, either, not anymore, not like you were with your parents. They still pay attention to you, even if you haven’t done anything in particular lately, wrong or right. 

It’s nice. 

Being here is nice. 

Not being alone. 

It feels safe, living in the Manor, surrounded by people. Even if it’s almost stifling, when people keep finding you. 

You find more hiding places to be away from the others, just for a bit, when it gets too much.

You don’t mind being alone now, since the house is almost never empty. 

You know you can find someone if you want to. 

You know you’re not alone anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the initial 2k words in maybe two hours after having the sentence “You hate being alone” pop into my head while I was watching an unrelated video about singing stuff, then edited it and added another hundred or so words. It was kinda nice, writing this whole thing so quickly. Even if I hate my brain for not letting me work on my WIPs and making something entirely new.   
> The TV show mentioned is The Umbrella Academy, which is a show about a dysfunctional family of ex-superheroes. It’s a really good show. The conversation mentioned in the fic is between two characters, Number Five and Luther, who both spent some time entirely isolated from other people. Number Five spent forty-five years alone in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and definitely has lingering issues, like the fact that he married a mannequin, and Luther spent four years living on the moon.   
> It’s a weird show, but I love it.   
> Come find me on tumblr @cassandra-starflower!


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